The insecurity of food supply in South Africa has heightened as about 10 million adults and 2.8 million children experience hunger while the nation wastes about 10.3 million tons of food per year. Senior lecturer in Strategy and Sustainability at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, Dr. Jako Volschenk, in a speech ahead of World Food Day said, “the growing population was only a part of the problem and that the agri-food chain itself need a rethink.” He added that increasing vegetarian or flexitarian diets, reducing and repurposing food waste, innovative use of insects as an alternative protein source and better converting of food waste are among the ways to reduce the impact of food production on climate change and biodiversity.
“South Africa’s 10.3 million tons of food waste is equivalent to more than a third of local production. Wasted food is unacceptable giving the levels of hunger in our country. More than half of the food waste takes place in the middle of the supply chain, between farm and fork- 19 per cent in post-harvest handling and storage and 49 per cent in manufacturing, processing and packaging while 18 per cent is wasted by household and consumers. We need to do better at wasting less and getting food to people who need it,” he further disclosed.
The World Bank indicated that life expectancy in South Africa has been on the rise for 16 years now over the past 50 years. This, the World Bank revealed that there has been a further 20 per cent increase in the population and the population needs feeding.
The Citizen Magazine reported that the developing total populace needs food, however the ecological effects of food creation, wasteful horticultural land use and the logical inconsistency of rising degrees of both appetite and food squander, require a new way to deal with getting nourishment to the world reasonably.
Comments are closed.